I think we're probably closer in a lot more ways than our day jobs would suggest. So, that was what we were going for with it, and that song became the obvious first single for us. A lot of the guitar sounds on that Strokes record kind of sound like cross-dressed keyboards, but they're just manipulated on guitar. When we actually did the recording, we came up with these harmonies that helped sweeten the song, and the guitar lead sounded like it either came out of a video game or kind of like that second Strokes record. this kind of weird pop music with kind of trashy drum machines. For the music, we wanted it to sound kind of like. He said something at some point about how the female character in the song is supposed to be this sort of neo-hippy - the kind of person who would marry a biker and name their kid Forest Whitaker. I think it just fell into Andy's head from the clear blue sky.

I was on tour and Andy was home, and he sent me a voicemail with this super-catchy melody and this whistling kind of hook, and weird lyrics like, '.you had a baby with a biker and named him Forest Whitaker.' That's kind of great, and it pops out for sure. We hadn't written a straight pop song for the record. And while we really liked this record and what we had on it so far, we kind of felt like that was the one color that was missing. From our prior record, we had a single called 'You Wouldn't Have To Ask,' and it was a pretty poppy song - an accessible, ear candy type of song. Usually the way we work is that either I write the basic structure of a song and we work it out from there, or Andy writes the basic structure and we do the same, and that one was an Andy song. The music portion of South By Southwest runs from March 12-March 17.KD: It was the last song we wrote on the record, and it's one of Andy's. What’s a guy gotta do to get a key change? But Houck’s main problem lies with the rhythm section lay a few James Brown records on that drummer and call me in the morning. Workmanlike guitars did their level best to elevate the proceedings, but the utter lack of anything in the way of syncopation or musical surprise was sort of astonishing. The group offered four songs, all ballads (even when the bass was hitting it hard) and all rather maudlin-sounding, too, though it can be quite hard to distinguish the lyrics of founder/frontman Matthew Houck (he sings in the tight-mouthed Dylan vein, or in the reticent phrasings of Tallest Man on Earth’s Kristian Matsson). Shortly after the Huron show, I hit the HypeMachine showcase to catch Phosphorescent, a band that has fared better among indie tastemakers. The band commandeers various virtues of the Shins and the Foxes, yes, but with an undeniable voice of its own-and a very welcoming one indeed. Drummer Mark Barry fixes a tambourine above his hi-hat (a smart technique and one I’m surprised more percussionists don’t use) and tends to lean in when he’s layering beats within beats on the toms with a pair of mallets.

On slow-jams “Ghost on the Shore” and “In the Wind,” the band stretched its legs without ever noodling, the guitars urging each other up the fretboard and twining into a wail as plaintive and memorable as Schneider’s own stratospheric voice. Fellow axe men Tom Renaud and Karl Kerfoot are capable of the hard-grind sonic breakdown one expects from Wilco, but they also create upper-register textures so rich that there’s no need for organ-the band doesn’t have one. But Schneider’s band is so good that his occasionally inscrutable lyrics about the splendors of nature, etc., come off as a conscious counterpoint to the very electric propulsion of the music. Yes, the Foxy touches are undeniable: slow, incremental guitar melodies that sound like Aaron Copland lost in the forest, and soaring, reverbed vocal harmonies that belong in a cathedral. That, at any rate, was the reassuring sense I got at last night’s show.

What’s so annoying about the hyper-referential haters is that they rarely consider the possibility that perhaps frontman/founder Ben Schneider is drawing not on Robin Pecknold or Jim James, but on a plenty worthy muse of his own. Pitchfork damned Lonesome Dreams, the group’s 2012 debut, with whisperingly faint praise, invoking the Foxes (and My Morning Jacket) wherever possible and rating the record a glum 5.6/10. Also, I have now basically seen Fleet Foxes #twobirds #SXSW.” What I didn’t realize then was just how bluntly the comparison had been used to bludgeon the band into spinoff status. I owe Lord Huron a partial apology: During the band’s grandiose, enveloping set at the Austin City Limits Moody Theater yesterday I dropped a lazy tweet: “Entrancing performance from Lord Huron at ACL Theater.

Ghost on the shore lyrics lord huron